Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - In comments to Bloomberg News on Thursday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo asked electric vehicle (EV) ...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - In comments to Bloomberg News on Thursday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo asked electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla to make its cars and batteries in Indonesia.
In an interview, the president, who is known as "Jokowi," said that Indonesia would rather have a "huge ecosystem of electric cars" than just use its natural resources to make batteries.
He also said that Indonesia might put a tax on nickel exports this year to bring in more money. Officials have said before that this could happen by the end of the third quarter.
Earlier this year, the president and other top government officials met with Tesla's founder, Elon Musk. They said they asked Musk to think about the Southeast Asian country as a place to make both batteries and cars.
When asked for a comment, Tesla representatives did not respond right away. When asked how far along the possible deal with Tesla was, Indonesia's Investment Ministry did not answer.
A senior Indonesian minister in charge of talks with Tesla, Luhut Pandjaitan, told the media earlier this month that the U.S. company has made deals worth about $5 billion to buy nickel products from companies that process nickel out of Indonesia's Morowali in Sulawesi island. Tesla's lithium batteries will use the nickel materials.
Luhut also said that his ministry was still in talks with Tesla, but that Musk was "busy with Twitter-related domestic matters."
Musk and Twitter Inc. are both suing each other right now because Musk wants to back out of his deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
During their meeting in May, Jokowi invited Musk to visit Indonesia in November, when the country will host a summit for the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies.
Toyota Motor Corp, Mitsubishi Motors Corp, and Hyundai Motor Group, all of which are based in Japan, have invested or said they plan to invest in making electric vehicles (EVs) in Indonesia.
A joint venture between SAIC Motor Corp Ltd, General Motors Co, and Wuling Motors called SGMW Motor Indonesia has an electric vehicle assembly factory in the resource-rich country.
